That is a mistake, and this redoubled commitment to endless war should be immediately reversed. U.S. military intervention in Somalia is exacerbating political instability without contributing to the security of the American or Somali people. This is not our fight, and we should stop fighting it.

Like all countries, the United States lives in a world with finite resources. We are still the wealthiest, most secure country on the planet. Rather than compounding our fiscal challenges by papering over them with even more borrowing and spending, the federal government should rethink U.S. grand strategy. We should abandon peripheral missions and focus on strengthening our nation and our military.

The best way forward is to continue deterring North Korea, support continued productive engagement and all moves toward peace—especially negotiations between Seoul and Pyongyang—and continue working on the diplomatic front to open North Korea and minimize the threat of war.

America had an enduring interest in ensuring that the Continent not fall under the domination of a single, capable, hostile power: That could pose a serious threat to America. The Truman administration was clear on this point: The main purpose of stationing American military forces in Europe in the early 1950s was to stay long enough to right the balance of power, not to stay forever.

If President Trump was serious about transitioning the U.S. out of endless wars, he would end the war in Afghanistan and pull out all U.S. forces. The United States can protect our people, defend the homeland, and snuff out transnational terrorists without stationing American soldiers in Afghanistan forever. Anything less is more of the same and will only prolong an extravagantly expensive and utterly discredited strategy.

That is unfortunate because the initial push to draw down U.S. military intervention in Somalia was the right one. If Trump isn’t planning to draw down U.S. intervention in Somalia, he should be. Counter-terror in Somalia is a parochial issue which poses no existential threat to America, and there’s no reason for Washington to do Mogadishu’s job.

Syria was becoming a distraction to the great-power strategy the Trump administration should resource. By getting out of Syria, the U.S. nips further mission creep in the bud and refocuses the national security bureaucracy on the priorities that can impact America’s security and economic prosperity.

The White House ordered the Pentagon to pull all U.S. troops out from Syria immediately. President Donald Trump tweeted: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency,” a stance that immediately received pushback from more interventionist lawmakers. In addition to the decision to pull out of Syria, made last week, a senior Pentagon official also suggested that troop reductions in Afghanistan are also under discussion.

Trump is right to accept victory in Syria. By September, the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had lost 99 percent of the territory its vaunted caliphate once held, according to a Pentagon inspector general’s report. With the last vestiges of ISIS territory in Syria falling to U.S.-backed forces in recent days, the goal that drew America into Syria is achieved.

It will be one of the many ironies of the Trump administration if the short-term seduction of a bit of free real estate undermines what might otherwise have turned out to be one of the administration’s few foreign-policy successes: the improvement of alliance burden sharing, an objective sought not only by this President, but by all of his predecessors.

When a project is so grossly mismanaged, that alone should raise strategic questions: Is this something we need to do? Is it crucial to U.S. security? Is it protecting vital U.S. interests and keeping Americans safe? Do the American people even want this done on their behalf? Don’t only ask whether the price for U.S. support of the Saudi war in Yemen was right; ask if it was right for the United States to be involved at all: Should we have refueled those bombers in the first place? Polling indicates most Americans say “no,” and with good reason.

The Pentagon doesn’t need more appropriations of taxpayer money—it needs a foreign policy leadership willing to recognize that nearly two decades of counterinsurgency, regime change campaigns, and meandering wars have degraded the U.S. military and put extreme pressure on the U.S. Treasury.

The U.S. foreign policy establishment must undergo a reassessment of Washington’s relationships with both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, viewing them less as the antidote for the region’s systemic security problems and more as the transactional arrangements they have been for decades.

The United States has remained the major military power and leader within NATO by an enormous margin. As a result, all European NATO armies, not just the Germans, have shortchanged common defense by free riding on American power. This defense welfare, funded by the American taxpayer, serves no one’s interests.

The U.S. would be able to pass on much of the cost of protecting Europe—in both blood and treasure—to Europeans themselves, who are already geopolitically situated to stand up for Western interests, in tandem with their American allies, in relation to Russia and non-state threats from Africa and the Middle East.

For those on either side of the aisle interested in passing meaningful policy into law, there are areas where President Trump and Congressional Democrats could work together—national security and foreign policy.

Improved relations between the Koreas make a military conflagration far less likely, and thus serve U.S. national security interests in East Asia. Ultimately for the United States, it is peace on the Korean Peninsula that truly matters.

American leaders must understand how cycles of escalation happen and how to break them before they get out of hand. To do otherwise would be a disservice to everyone who has and will serve. Veterans Day and the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I should be a time to remember that.

Washington must not get involved in another war and reconstruction effort that it cannot handle. Instead, America should offer direct aid, coordination an international humanitarian response, and assist Venezuela's neighbors in housing and caring for those who have fled. Washington should also continue to put financial and diplomatic pressure on Mauro. But nothing more.

It is not in U.S. security interests to maintain an unnecessarily provocative military stance against China in which miscalculation or mistake could result in a military clash. Such an outcome could be catastrophic for American security and economic prosperity.

We are long past the point in which U.S. involvement in Yemen—involvement that Congress has not expressly authorized—is making the prospects of a political resolution more difficult to envision. American military and logistical assistance to the Saudi coalition is morally strategically bankrupt. The U.S. can no longer squander it’s good name on a war in which all of the belligerents are engaging in ruthless conduct.

America does not need to try and be the referee of the Middle East and force sides to the negotiating table in the Yemen civil war. The best thing we can do for peace is to immediately withdraw our military support and encourage the sides to find a political solution.

Washington should work with Russia when we can and challenge Russia when we must. Promoting personal exchanges between lawmakers in Washington and Moscow—as Sen. Paul proposes—seems like a small, but potentially worthwhile step in the right direction.

The Khashoggi affair and Riyadh’s floundering cover up of the murder demonstrates why putting all of America’s chips in the Saudi pot is dangerous. While the U.S. should always look for opportunities to engage the Saudis on mutual problems, Washington should no longer confuse Saudi Arabia’s interests with its own.